Convolutions of Pride
by MaussHauss
Summary: Mahariel stood like a waking deer in the sun. "Parevaas, lethalin. Not so bad." Alistair shook himself loose, and bent to help the other survivors. "Great. Now there's TWO of them." - m!Surana/Zevran/m!Mahariel - slash/twincest
1. Chapter 1

_K!meme prompt that has run away with itself into something_  
_else entirely. It makes me itch when I can't stick to the _  
_guidelines given, so you lovelies get the finished product._

:D

_I'll meet you in the void, dear readers. In. The. Voooiiid.  
_

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"So, I have a brother."

No greeting, no warning, just the thump of a travel pack to the rough-hewn wooden tabletop and the heavy scuff of a stool not ready to take the collapsing bones. This is Aen's way; damn the smalltalk and ready the tea.

Zevran's lips curl over his own steaming mug, eyes hooded across the pamphlet in hand while he pretends to read. (Coin was scarce in the provinces, but bounties were still offered by incompetent governments and Zevran especially liked the 'dead or alive' marks.) "Last I heard, you had several. Sisters, too, though you've never taken the time to introduce any of them. Rather unjustly, might I add."

Aen waves as if to clear the air of gnats. "Not the Surana brood. I mean, he _is _a Surana, but he was given away to the Dalish when the pandemic hit Highever."

"Oh?" Zevran sat a bit straighter, glancing up. He curled back to the paper, scowling, taking a too-deep sip of the strong tea that scalded the tip of his tongue. Aen had tracked in blood, _again_; it was on the doorjamb and now the table and all over Aen himself - bright smears and dark splatters and grisly drying patches. "So you've a Dalish brother, then. Good news, I take it?" He bit back the urge to nag over the mess, having felt a little catastrophically 'fishwife-at-home' on more than one occasion and what ever he and the Warden had between themselves was under enough strain without things going south _domestically_.

"Well..." Aen raked a hand through close-cropped hair, dislodging bits of gravel and tacky crumbs of blood and Maker only knew what else.

Zevran discreetly brushed the bounty poster across the tabletop to sweep away the afternoon's leftover violence. "Well, what? Did you fight? Did you recruit him? Is he dead?" This, asked as if musing whether it might rain later.

Aen shifts in his seat, leaning his elbow on the table and peering nearly _into_ Zevran. "He looks... well, he looks exactly like me. I mean, remarkably like me... he _is_ me, in fact, if I wasn't so well-traveled." Mutual grins, but neither need even mention the innuendo. "They knew we were brothers straight away, though Maker knows the poor man had a time of it recognizing _me _any."

'They' ... 'poor man'... Aen was vaguely and flippantly carding through the memory of this monumental reunion, obviously to hide some weakness, some sentiment or fragile hope, perhaps. Zevran set down his tea, and stood to gather a clean earthenware mug. "Hn. A twin, then?" His grin warmed, eying Aen slyly. "I imagine that would do wonders for your vanity."

And there it was, the lynchpin, the floodgate, the single grain of rice on the scale. Aen made a noise of indescribable exasperation, and thumped his fist on the tabletop before dropping his head to join. "He's _beautiful_. I half wonder our mother wouldn't have sent him to Chantry instead of the Dalish, had she known he'd turn out so..." Another groan, Aen wringing his forehead against the table as if to scrape the memory out (and only scraping dried gore into the woodwork, tsk).

Zevran chuckled, but for all his questions the one that skipped straight from his brain through his teeth without his permission was "That he would turn out as you have?"

"Well, I don't rightly know. I don't _think _so." And there was a glimmer of disappointment. "I only meant - ah, well, nevermind."

Itching with curiosity, Zevran calmly placed the tea in front of Aen and sat, to wait. It was much like fishing, these conversations. Throw something out and don't reel it in until the net was heavy enough. So Zevran waited, studying Aen, trying to smooth over the scars and grow the hair out longer, trying to piece him back together whole, with a complexion rosy and peach and unpaled by Darkspawn Taint. Maybe even freckles, who knows? Dalish probably got more sunlight than tower mages, so his skin might even be a light gold...

But everything else - the near delicacy of his bones, the willowy stretch of limbs and the cutting blue eyes - it was difficult to imagine those belonging to a stranger.

"You asked if I recruited him. I did."

"Ah. So, all this blood...?"

"We cleared out the nest over near Gherin's Pass."

"Hoh. Just the two of you?"

"Two other recruits accompanied."

"And?"

"He pulls a longbow nearly as tall as m - as him. It's got casing and... pointy bits. For up-close, er, stuff."

"Combat."

"Yes, close-quarters whatsit." A bit more staring vacantly at the table between them. Aen rubs his face, sighing. "It's amazing."

Zevran hummed low in the back of his throat, obligingly. "Should he survive your mysterious ritual, you might introduce me, no?"

A weak laugh, and Aen hides himself behind his tea. "No! Absolutely not. He's so very... no. You two would get along like tinder and flame."

"Hoho! There would be heat?"

"...He would consume you."

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	2. Chapter 2

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Of course, after hearing naught but aversion to the idea, Zevran wanted to meet this second-Aen even more. When pressed for details Aen himself would simply sigh, deep in his chest, close his eyes and shake his head without answering. Zevran often wondered if it was jealousy, faced with a mix of warmth and aversion at the thought, and was pleased when that turned out to be a false assumption. Well, the jealousy bit was completely true - Aen was openly petty and refreshingly blunt when it came to emotion - but to whom the jealousy was aimed, ah, now that had been a surprise.

At the start of it all, Zevran had simply spied from afar. The man's name was Ain'Leathbreac Mahariel, or just 'Mahariel' in that distant, cold Dalish way of introduction. Aen called Mahariel 'brother', as if he was trying to convince himself of the fact. Mahariel called Aen by his full first name, or by nothing at all.

What struck Zevran most, though, was how _alike_ the two really were. They both moved in sinewy cadence, glanced through their surroundings with bird-like methodology and neither one really seemed to eat much. Mahariel was quite a bit thicker in the shoulders and Aen of course was a chaotic mess of bones and feathers and chasind hyde next to the archer's simple brown and green faire. Stick them both in Grey Warden leathers, with the blue trim and fine silver chainmaille, and it was like an early Mornmas gift Zevran often recieved in some of his more involving dreams.

They were both incredibly vain, and this could be seen at the outset. Where Aen covered most of his scars in cowl and scarf (fine fabrics, always, mustn't look ashamed when one is simply accessorizing and keeping out the cold), Mahariel proudly displayed a face decorated by vallasin tattoos. Mahariel grew his ginger hair like spun gold and tied it out of the way with beaded thongs of leather. Aen wore high fur collars with gold beads woven in. Mahariel kept delicate silk braids under the leather of his wristguards, so that they flashed colorful whenever he let an arrow loose. Aen wore an absurd amount of warding rings on his long fingers, catching the light from even the dimmest candle.

They had the same grin, the same calculating wit. They nearly even had the same voice; Mahariel, accented by that of the Dales, a softer lilt but no less deep, and peppered with terms native to the woodland. Aen was that of the tower, a bit nasally and direct, but for all this there was no telling either apart in conversation. (Especially when they began to borrow vocabulary from one another.)

"It's like there's _two _of him." Alistair had provided his own smidgeon of horror at having admitted it out loud. "I helped Mahariel up from the, you know, the joining and you know what he did?"

"Er, something particularly Aen-like, I assume?"

"He _made eyes _at me."

"Ha." Zevran shifted, arms crossed over his chest. He still had yet to speak with the man directly, and had the creeping suspicion that Aen was avoiding him for just that reason. "Half of Amaranthine has made the bedroom eyes at you, dear Templar. Blame your royal heritage, and give it a rest with all the 'oh poor me I am so attractive' garbage."

Alistair's laugh was cautious. "You're in kind of a m-"

"I am not in a mood, I am simply not in the mood to deal with you. Come now, where is your Commander?"

"Er. I am the Commander."

"T'che! Nobody tells me anything."

"Because you insist on a shack in the city, instead of the barracks?"

Their words seemed to collide, "My apartment is hardly a shack." "Not that you'd need to stay in the barracks since I'm sure Aen'd have you in his chambers." "I'm also not about to share a room with twenty other - what?" "What, what?"

"Go back to the part where Aen has chambers."

"Don't know where else an Arl is supposed to sleep. I was offered, but, you know. Too drafty. Not lively enough."

"You were offered to share Aen's chambers? Tsk, I am unsurprised."

"Ha, haa. Anyway, he's there if you need him." Alistair nodded a goodbye in his prim fashion, refusing to meet Zevran's eyes after the telling to go meet his fellow Warden in a bedchamber, of all places.

Through dint of wounded pride at never having been to Aen's room, Zevran tracked his own way through the keep. If he were to, say, run into a certain elusive Dalish recruit during his search, all the better.

No, that he did not - _even more the better_, because the voices drifting from behind the heavy oak doors of the bedchamber could have belonged to the same man.

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	3. Chapter 3

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"_Lethalin_..." Mahariel was Aen's height exactly - unusual, since most elves were shorter and most humans certainly taller. Their eyes met and either thought he could be looking into a mirror. Nigh on twenty-two years from the cradle and yet they finished each others thoughts in conversation and deed as if they'd never been apart. Neither had been very worldly before the Blight but both acted out as if the world itself were simply another swath of forest, another floor in a tower. "This is all I was given of you," Mahariel pulled his tunic open to reveal a faded mottle of scar down his shoulder and ribs. "Each time I asked, I was told that it was the mark of my other half, a terrible incident in the _krattel _I was lucky to survive."

Aen breathlessly swallowed against the shiver echoing in his own ribcage as he reached out to brush the warm skin (feverish, from the onset of Taint). "Lucky... 'tis true enough." He slid closer and embraced Mahariel hard enough to feel his heartbeat in his own heels, as if he could wrap the man up inside of himself - tuck him back into the small dark safe place inside of his chest from which Mahariel must have sprung because nobody this perfect could possibly exist without the aid of magic -

"Lucky to have found you again, Ain'laoinneach." It wasn't a kiss in the traditional sense, not a clash or a merge, neither invasion nor surrender. They simply breathed, and touched, and moved in tandem as if by long practice. Aen would never forget the night spent explaining the Blight, and how Mahariel had swept his eyes over him as if to hound out the scars carefully wrapped behind cowl and scarf and layered robes. He would never forget the way Mahariel had leapt at the chance to join the Wardens, the glint in his eye at Aen's severe warning.

He would never forget the sinking sensation that he was about to lose another vital half of himself, nor the dizzying relief when Mahariel rose with the others, woozy and triumphant. He might never forget Alistair's bloodless horror when he realized that Mahariel was what one might consider the _evil _twin of the pair, and that was saying a lot when Aen himself was barely moral. But that was much never-forgetting, and surely some things had to be overlooked, placed neatly aside on a high shelf and left for years to collect dust until Aen was called to the Maker's side to plead his case.

_Because it's just like pleasuring myself, and I've been doing a lot of that lately anyway._ Probably wasn't the most convincing excuse. _Because he's beautiful, and is morbidly fascinated with me, and intelligent enough to go about this discreetly._ Wasn't even very convincing to Aen himself. _Because I did not know what love was until the forest gave me back my heart. _A tad poetic, but regardless...

Mahariel, for his part, remained inscrutable and flirtatious. In a room alone, however, neither had to force smiles or hide the truth behind kinder words. Aen crushed Mahariel's hips against his own, the air twisting slowly around them as if in a dance. He wanted to wrap around Mahariel like a scarf, the urgency of his grasp ebbing in tune to the matching thrust. Aen could practically taste it in the back of his throat, the minute the hazy desperation turned solid with lust. Mahariel began to move in earnest against him, bracing a hand to the desk when Aen's knees buckled.

So much more graceful than Aen had ever been, as if Mahariel was everything right and capable in an elven body - all sinew and bone and silent footpad. It made Aen ache.

The door drifted silently open on well-oiled hinges. Having the sharper perception, it was Mahariel who glanced up first. His glare nearly stopped Zevran at the threshold. Nearly. "Announce yourself," he all but barked in That Tone of Voice that Aen often used on the recruits.

"Hoh, nevermind me, gentlemen." Zevran remained lax against the door frame, arms loosely crossed while he appraised the sight of one glare surfacing to join the other. On the cue of Aen's struggle to stand properly, Zevran seemed to rally himself, crossed the room in quick strides and pulled a fine piece of carpentry (that only passed as a chair as a working title) to straddle, elbows on the backrest - chin in hand, leaning forward eagerly to tip the seat on two carved legs. "Please continue what you were doing, in fact, as if I were not here at all." His other hand flapped impatiently at the air, eyes wide and rapt.

Aen scoffed the same time Mahariel tsk'd, and one gaze seemed to snag on another. The grin was passed around like a bad cough or a good book, first curling at the edges of Zevran's expression because hey, _twins_, and passing without word to Mahariel who then cast it toward Aen (whose weakness was smirking if it was anything).

"I take it you know this flat-ear, then?" Mahariel lifted his chin in a sharp inspection.

Aen nodded, wary but amused. "He's a friend. One of very few."

Zevran studied a fingernail, chair thudding back to all four of its legs. "And a lover, let us not forget. One of very many."

"Hmp," Mahariel chewed the inside of a his cheek, an expression so very _Aen _that Zevran had to look twice between the two (he hadn't yet had the chance to see them both up close like this). "An appropriate conduit then, wouldn't you say?"

Aen sputtered, "Conduit! So you do care whether or not I'm cast to the nine hells. That's... reassuring."

"I care not for your idiotic shem habits, _lethalin_, I just don't want you throwing yourself in any rivers out of guilty platitude to a false God."

"Ooh," Zevran purred. "I think I like him."

"You say that now," Aen drawled from over Mahariel's shoulder. "But remember that familiarity breeds contempt."

"Do not speak of me as if I were absent." Aen's voice, Aen's face, even Aen's temper... Mierda, Zevran was doomed. Mahariel made his point by bending to scoop Aen over his shoulder, taking the few steps to the bed to deposit his flailing parcel. He snapped long fingers calloused by bowstring and fletch, balefully urging Zevran nearer. "You've done this before, I take it?"

"Shared a lover? Hahaha, I daresay we have, yes." Zevran hummed, pleased at the turn of the day's events. Still, he could not ignore how still Aen had become on the bed, and the worry that flickered in his eyes drew Mahariel's venom. Wounded creatures were easier targets, after all.

"But not recently?"

A scoff, from the tangle of limbs and quilt. "I haven't bedded Zevran in months, nevermind with whomever matches his tunic for the week."

"Ey, now." Zevran couldn't hide the pinch to his brow, nor the hard scrape of his voice. Covered with a playful aside, "I change my tunic at least every other day."

But Mahariel was on the hunt, pupils small and surrounded by a blue so light as to almost be silver in the daylight. "And why is that, I wonder," A measured step toward Zevran. "Some sort of poxy?"

Zevran's laugh cut the sapling of tension in its stand. "Forever the culprit, mysterious rashes." He nodded to the bed. "Of which I have none, worry not." The permission was in Mahariel's step back, and Aen's hand flew from his eyes with surprise when Zevran's weight joined him on the bed. "The answer to your wonder," Zevran had not yet touched Aen, but the heat of his stare as he addressed Mahariel made Aen fidget in place and turn his cheek into the quilt. "Remains a mystery to me, as well."

Aen swallowed, closing his eyes.

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	4. Chapter 4

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Mahariel bit back further inquiry, reigned in his curiosity (surprised that Aen even had a lover, nevermind one in a history of many), and acted before his blood-and-flesh counterpart would lose nerve (or gain it, enough of it at least to actually protest and not lay there like a stricken slug). The bed dipped with his added weight, and he slung a protective arm over Aen's thin waist. "_Parevaas, altumn sed denahi_... I am right here." A murmured prayer, eyes shut against the curve of Aen's shoulder.

Aen's eyes had flicked uncertainly between Zevran and Mahariel, and settled up to the bed's rich blue canopy. His next breath was shaky, a warm puff against Zevran's fingertips.

Zevran, for his part, scoffed softly. "Come now, Warden. It was never so terrible as to - "

"Nnh." Aen squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing hard. "And what do either of you know about terrible?"

Mahariel flinched in confusion, leaning up on one elbow to better investigate. "You speak of the wounds?" His long, elegant fingers were halted at the top of Aen's collar, a discomfited squirm turned brother facing brother.

Zevran's startled glare was gone as quickly as it appeared. Rather unusual, this spike of jealousy. Unsettling. The urge to pull an arm around Aen and draw him from his guileless kin nearly drove him from the bed altogether, but frankly Zevran's curiosity ran deeper than that of morbid introspection. He... worried, he supposed, over Aen. And why not? If it was true, that Aen had taken no other lover to his bed after the Amaranthine incident, then Zevran had every right to find out why. Opportunistic fingers busied themselves at the laces on the back of the embroidered cowl.

Mahariel whispered another reassurance, tugging Aen's arms forward to fold into his own until the top layer of the robes were loose enough to prize off. Zevran left Mahariel to coaxing Aen nude while he himself pulled his own tunic free, watchful of any protest. He hardly noticed the scarring until Mahariel had a hand over it, running up first one side of the massive damage and then the other while Aen shuddered and curled his long body as if to hide it under the shelter of Mahariel's perfection.

Zevran swallowed back an acidic comment, hands warm against the knitted gashes webbed across Aen's ribs. Why to Mahariel, and not to the man whom he called lover? Why now, why allow this elf (who was leagues more vain than Zevran, that much was obvious) to expose what had been so carefully guarded? Zevran's touch was reverent, his papery laughter gentle and patronizing against the ragged shell of Aen's ear. "It does not hurt, Warden. No longer."

Aen's return mumble cut thick and sour. "What do either of you know of hurt?"

Mahariel, ever calculating, removed himself from the tangle of mottled limbs to stand from the bed.

Zevran pulled himself to Aen, folding over the trembling bones with a sigh, burying his nose at the back of Aen's ear to whisper; "You dare ask me that?" He felt it the moment Aen relented, wordlessly conceding to Zevran's point. A second demand, "Who did this?" an illustrative swipe of fingers across prickling skin, for it was most definitely a 'who' and not a 'what', the burns arranged strategically and the deeper cuts placed well away from any vulnerable arteries.

Aen's voice had leveled out to the stony detachment he was famous for, though neither Zevran nor Mahariel knew if they were to take comfort from this or not. "An architect."

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_Aaand suddenly it's about crippling angst!_  
_Kinda toasty in this here void._


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